Emphasizing on the urgency of obligations to respect human rights and the rule of law in the current context around COVID-19 pandemic, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner stated- “It is clear that securing the rule of law and human rights is key to achieving the transformational change we need - based on principles of trust, accountability and justice. This ultimately means forging a new, more inclusive social contract.”

Governments in nine Caribbean countries will still be able to maintain their disaster risk management efforts even with national finances stretched by the demands of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is because the Government of Canada has partnered with the Caribbean Development Bank to offer assistance through a new CAD$20 million fund - the Canada-CARICOM Climate Adaptation Fund (CCAF).

“Timing is critical. At national or at local level, we must open gradually, taking a phased approach that relies on robust surveillance, data, and expanded testing and contact tracing capacity.  If the situation changes and infections rise, localities and countries must adjust course quickly" Carissa Etienne said.

Public health (prevention of the spread of Infectious Disease) (COVID-19) regulations, 2020.

“One of the ways it [misinformation] is spreading is the way people are sharing”, Melissa Fleming, who oversees the UN’s global communications effort, said on the eve of the Pause campaign’s launch, chosen to coincide with Social Media Day.

“The idea of pause is: take care before you share. We hope that ‘take care before you share’, starts to be a social norm that people have in the back of their heads and that will enable a personal behavior change.”

The number of working hours lost across the world in the first half of 2020 was significantly worse than previously estimated, while the highly uncertain recovery in the second half of the year will not be enough to go back to pre-pandemic levels, even in the best scenario, and risks seeing continuing large scale job losses, warns the International Labour Organization (ILO).

El 29 de junio de 2020, el Gobierno de Paraguay presentó el Plan de Reactivación Económica, que incluye un paquete de medidas en tres ejes estratégicos como protección social, inversión pública para empleos y créditos para el desarrollo. Estas medidas irán acompañadas con reformas diseñadas para avanzar hacia una transformación del Estado paraguayo, indicaron. Como parte del plan, además de las inversiones vigentes, el Ejecutivo prevé un monto adicional de 350 millones de dólares a ser destinados a la compensación económica del Instituto de Previsión Social (IPS) a trabajadores cesados por la pandemia; subsidio económico Pytyvõ para las ciudades de frontera, dinamización de obras públicas; construcción de viviendas, así como financiamiento a productores a través del Fondo Ganadero y del Crédito Agrícola de Habilitación (CAH).

Las medidas de observancia general por el bienestar de los habitantes son de aplicabilidad en todo el territorio de la República de Guatemala, en los lugares y transportes de cualquier clase sometidos a la jurisdicción nacional, siempre dentro del marco legal y con el respeto de todas las formas de organización social reconocidas en nuestra Nación.

As some destinations have begun to re-open to international travel, the essence of this New Norm is emerging as well, with bio-security measures at its core. Much like our regional competitors, Belize has

been over the past two months working with industry partners to develop a set of national guidelines that our sector can stand guided by as we also seek the best possible strategy for a safe re-opening of our borders to international tourism. Minister of Tourism & Civil Aviation.

“It’s clear that to bring COVID-19 under control, and to save lives, we need effective vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics – in unprecedented quantities and at unprecedented speed”, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom.

More than $31 billion is needed over the next 12 months to develop medicines that will be effective against COVID-19, and make them available to all people, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners said.

The contribution of USD$5.3 million will benefit a total of fifteen Caribbean countries including Trinidad and Tobago. Overall, the collaboration will support increased access to Personal Protective Equipment and other critical supplies to assist countries in their efforts to save lives and limit the human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 Pandemic, focusing on populations experiencing marginalization or vulnerability, including health care workers.

“In these challenging times we need to reinforce, support and work in partnership with NHRIs to address COVID-19. We also need to support member states to ‘recover back better’ - to use inclusive approaches in their recovery towards achieving the SDGs and securing the social contract,” stated Asako Okai, UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Crisis Bureau.

La pandemia también ha provocado una escasez de opioides, lo que a su vez puede hacer que las personas busquen sustancias más fácilmente disponibles como el alcohol, los benzodiacepinas o la mezcla con drogas sintéticas. La Oficina alerta que en consecuencia pueden surgir patrones de uso más dañinos a medida que algunos usuarios pueden decidir comenzar a inyectarse, o inyectarse más seguido.

Because the pandemic has led to highly addictive opioid shortages, people may seek out more readily available substances, including alcohol, sedatives or by using more harmful delivery methods, such as intravenous injection.

Reports of some being locked in their rooms, while others have felt totally isolated and abandoned, are some of the examples of discrimination and inequality that those living with disability have experienced.

The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) Office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Countries (ECC) and USAID recently assisted the government of Antigua and Barbuda in their fight against COVID-19.

Additionally, as we enter the Hurricane season, the vehicle will also be able to support and respond to other health emergencies and support disease surveillance activities of any new or existing health challenges.

WHO chief and former health minister of Ethiopia said many countries are finding it difficult to obtain concentrators, as 80 per cent of the market is owned by just a few companies.  Demand is outstripping supply.

To ease shortages, WHO is buying them for countries that need them most, he said, and ongoing talks with suppliers have led to the purchase of 14,000 concentrators, which WHO will send to 120 countries in the coming weeks.  WHO has identified a further 170,000 that can be available over the next six months, at a value of $100 million. 

PAHO’s director Carissa Etienne said countries must adjust and coordinate their COVID-19 response based on increasingly detailed data. “Governments will have to make decisions, considering simultaneously health, economic, and social indicators. This will allow health officials to understand where transmission is accelerating, and which groups are at greater risk so as to better target their efforts,” she added.

Within the region, the Caribbean economies are suffering even more due to their high dependence on one of the most dramatically impacted sectors—tourism—which, for some, accounts for 50 to 90 percent of GDP and employment.

Given the scale of the crisis and unprecedented uncertainty, governments have had to also deploy fiscal measures to strengthen the health system, protect the most vulnerable and support employment and otherwise viable businesses.

The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Central American Program for Integrated Coffee Rust Management (PROCAGICA) collaborated to distribute seeds and inputs to coffee farmers in several districts in Nicaragua, as part of strategic actions to assist in reducing rural vulnerability triggered by Covid-19.

The objective is to reduce vulnerability in two ways: by supporting the production of food with short cycle crops and offering farmers the opportunity to earn income by selling crop surpluses.